So I gave a listen to the Drexel Bowie reel (#4 in the Young American sessions, recorded Aug. 14, 1974). It features early versions of Young Americans, John I’m Only Dancing Again, Can You Hear Me, After Today, and It’s Gonna Be Me. Since they were outtakes, they were never fully mixed with overdubs. I believe that this reel was recorded the day after the “Gouster sessions” excerpts found on Youtube.

The coolest thing was being able to selectively hear from each of the tracks (16 in all). Bowie and Garson were always on the same page, but the other musicians were obviously still learning the songs. Apparently, only one of the Sigma session musicians—percussionist Larry Washington—played on the record because everyone else gave Bowie the cold shoulder. Scandalous!

I strongly urge anyone in Philadelphia to give this stuff a listen. The Sigma archive is an absolute treasure trove, even without a lot of the Gamble and Huff recordings (they came in and snatched away most of it). You can even poke through the Sigma rolodex and get the old contact info for the O’Jays.

Some song by song notes if you care to be geeky:

Young Americans (listed as “Young American”)- Bassist Willie Weeks stops playing right before the Nixon line and David has to sing him his part- The song ends with Garson doing a samba-like piano number and David singing a “la la la la la la” melody

John I’m Only Dancing (Again) (listed as “Dancing”)- Garson switches from Fender Rhodes to Clavinet about midway

Can You Hear Me? (listed as Can You Here Me) - Feels really naked without the call and response backing vocals. - Longer outro with extra sax flourishes from Sanborn; the song just kind of peters out on a piano scale by Garson- Afterwards, a muffled voice says “Feels much better.” Possibly Visconti?

After Today- Longer outro with extra utterances of “after today” and some oohs and ahs.

It’s Gonna Be Me- Some parts are in second person: “Hey Jack you better shake it off, put her out of your head”/“Thinking you balled just another young girl last night.” Reverts to first person elsewhere: “I’ve lied and taken off into the day”- “Leaving another conquest to weep over the breakfast tray” instead of “girl”- “Seen her before you came, hit me Jack” instead of “love her before I knew her name”- “I couldn’t really stammer out my name” instead of “stammer out a word”- “Stallions and lightning won’t hold me back” instead of “looking for love.” At least, that’s what it sounded like!- When the song concludes, David asks, “Which tempo do you prefer?”

Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey, members of the Spiders from Mars, in London's Heddon Streetto unveil The Crown Estate's commemorative plaque to David Bowie's iconic creation, Ziggy Stardust, marking the 40th anniversaryof the album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, where the photograph on the front cover was taken.PA Archive/Press Association

Life in the 70s with a music legend — by David Bowie’s drummer Woody Woodmansey

26 January 2015 12.00pm.

HE played drums on David Bowie’s biggest hits in the 70s — but Woody Woodmansey reckons having to dress like a Londoner was his biggest challenge!

Woody first set eyes on the rock superstar when he and his bandmates travelled down from Hull, to all live in the one big house with Bowie, wife Angie, son Zowie and assorted friends.

From their time at Haddon Hall, Beckenham, would come a string of hit albums and singles, with Bowie at the peak of his powers and his band living together as a family.

But it was the star’s ideas of how the group should look — and the space-age costumes Angie created for them — that made the blunt Yorkshireman think twice!

“The idea of the hippy commune was still around then, in the early 70s, so Haddon Hall was like that,” reveals Woody. “It was different, put it that way!

“But it was also a mix of looking to the future, with alien overtones. I hadn’t spent much time in London apart from a couple of gigs, but the idea was you couldn’t really make it unless you moved there.

“When Bowie called and said to come down, it was my chance to go professional. Meeting him for the first time, I knocked on the door and there he was. I had a denim shirt, patches on my denim jeans, moccasins, hair halfway down my back.

“That was about as colourful as I got! David had a rainbow-coloured T-shirt, bright-red corduroy trousers, red shoes with blue stars painted on them, and silver bracelets. I’d seen a picture of him on a poster, but it was still a culture shock.

“I thought: ‘OK, this is what it’s like in London, and it’s definitely not Hull!’ Even the girls in Hull didn’t wear nice things like this. But we did get into it, eventually.

“He did have to twist our arms to wear some of the gear. We sat around and David would draw sketches of the outfits, and he dragged us round Liberty’s in London.

“The guitarist, Mick Ronson, and I were following David around, thinking: ‘We’re in a rock ’n’ roll band, and he’s got us going round looking at material, talking about who will wear what.’

“Then Angie said there was a problem. Mick had decided it wasn’t his thing and was heading for the station. David sent us to get him back. I sat with him for an hour on the station platform, just talking him into coming back.”

After such a dodgy beginning, it’s amazing to think that in just a few short years, they had delivered albums The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane.

Songs like Life On Mars, Changes, Starman, Jean Genie and many more made Bowie, Woody and the band — the Spiders From Mars — the biggest thing since The Beatles.

“We didn’t get to see our old mates in Hull for a year or more, as we were so busy,” Woody recalls.

“When I did go back, though, we’d go to the pub and I didn’t have enough money to buy my round.

“They’d say: ‘Your round, Woody’ and I had to say I couldn’t do it. There wasn’t a lot of money yet, but you just can’t convince people that even if you have hit records and have been on television, you might not have loads of cash.

“You must be rich, they think, so they just thought I was being a tight Yorkshireman!”

If Bowie’s lyrics, the whole image side of things, and his mass appeal to the kids made them huge, Woody believes the songs themselves were the main thing.

He’s justly proud of some stupendous drumming on records that continue to thrill 40 years on.

“Life On Mars is a song where we worked out the arrangement, exactly what I would play, because we didn’t want the drums to clash with all the strings,” he explains.

“That was a challenge, to get a classical sound mixed with rock, but to avoid being cheesy. Ken Scott, who had worked with The Beatles, told us to come in and hear the rough mix, and our jaws dropped.

“It was a case of: ‘My God, did we play that?’ When you hear a recording on the studio equipment, it just blows you away, how powerful it is. But it was scary, too, as we all loved it but wondered if anyone else would like it. There was nothing else like it then.”

He needn’t have worried. Even when they were just sitting around at Haddon Hall, Bowie was putting himself through a self-imposed crash course on the piano, which saw the songs pour out of him for a prolific few years.

Sadly, two of the group, Mick Ronson and bass player Trevor Bolder, both died tragically young, at 46 and 62. Now, only Woody is left apart from the man himself.

The good news is that he’s been touring with a very special tribute for all Bowie fans. Woody and his band, featuring some top names from Bowie’s career, have been performing the entire Man Who Sold The World album, plus other classics.

“It was a big influence on heavy metal music, but I was surprised to find we influenced the punks, too!” he laughs. “Glen Matlock, of the Sex Pistols, came to see us and admitted he pinched parts!

“This music appeals to all ages. Honestly, on this tour, I’ve looked out at 16-year-olds and 60-year-olds. But if you had told me 40 years ago it would still be big, I would have laughed at you.”

Many people reckon Bowie became a rock star by simply acting like one. Woody reveals that Bowie really was unlike anyone on Earth.

“When I first met him, I thought this guy is being a rock star 24-7,” he recalls.

“He never stopped, he was always thinking about songs, about style.

“I had never met anybody like that.

“Funnily enough, I never saw him as a rock ’n’ roll star, I saw him more as a James Dean who also sang and played guitar.

“He was good at soaking up what was going on, what was bubbling under, and making it his by doing his own thing with it.”

BBC Radio 4Marc Riley's Musical Time Machine, David Bowie and Iggy Pop

David Bowie and Iggy PopMarc Riley's Musical Time Machine Episode 1 of 2

The BBC's archive is justifiably and inarguably world-famous, but most of this attention and praise is showered on the riches contained within the Beeb's music archive - the life-changing Peel performances, seminal sessions from Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie.

But these musical marvels risk over-shadowing another archive that's just as diverse, rich and rewarding - the BBC's spoken word, music archive.

As long as there have been pop stars, the BBC has spoken to them. Marc Riley and his trusty Time Machine - a rickety rust-bucket, back-firing jalopy - travel back through the years to visit the great and the good, the famous and the infamous, safely ensconced within the treasure trove of the BBC archive. Marc replays candid snapshots at crucial points in the careers of some of the biggest names in music.

In each episode, Marc lines up the Time Machine to travel to two different points in time and revisit two interviews with something in common - a person or place, a shared influence or ideology, a discovery, a misunderstanding.

In this first episode, the interviews share a geographic connection - Berlin. David Bowie, in conversation with Radio 1's Stuart Grundy from 1977, explains why the city was so good for his creativity. The second interview comes from 1990 when Iggy Pop spoke to Nicky Campbell about how he hooked up with Bowie and offered another perspective on their time together in Germany.

Produced by Ian CallaghanA Smooth Operations production for BBC Radio 4.

Joe Stevens’ best photograph: David Bowie chats to a Paris station porter

‘He arrived in Paris as jeans-wearing David Jones – but after an outfit change stepped off the train as David Bowie’

It was 1973, and David Bowie was terrified of dying in a plane crash, so he refused to fly anywhere. He’d gone by boat to Japan to tour, but he was now becoming a major star in the UK, following the release of Ziggy Stardust, so his manager called him up and told him he’d better get back quick – to make another album and do some big shows. By the time he got to Paris, which is where this was taken, he looked awful. Grey. It had taken him two weeks to get there by train: he’d seen a lot of snow, a lot of misery, and eaten a lot of bad food.

When he got off the train, he was just David Jones the folk singer: a rough-looking guy in jeans. And suddenly he was met by this whole entourage: his wife Angie and people with costumes and makeup. You could see he was surprised – he hadn’t had that out in Japan. He got back on the train, put this outfit on, and morphed into David Bowie. In those minutes, you could see he really was about to become a major pop star.

The whole scene was being watched by a station porter, who’d come over to see what the fuss was about – all these people in colourful jackets making a scene. David started chatting to him in French. Later, I asked him what they had talked about. “He wanted to know who I was,” he said. “I told him I was David Bowie. He had no idea who that was.”

I went with them all to London – in a hovercraft. David didn’t know it yet, but his management had been getting ready to really launch his career. He had 15 people waiting for him: limousine-drivers, costume-designers, security guards. A whole stream of gigs in Britain were planned. It worked. He took off.

I’d shot him about 20 times over the years, but this was the first time I’d ever met him. I was there to do a cover shoot for NME. The afro on the left belongs to the writer Charles Shaar Murray. The moment we met, David started imitating my New York accent. He said he’d been studying how people speak and was hoping to get some movie roles: he hoped to play a “yank”. Later he would – in The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Hunger.

Bowie had strange tastes and habits. One day I was walking through Soho, and he pulled up in his limo, shouting out of the window for me to get in. We drove to a cafe on Carnaby Street to pick up some egg sandwiches. It was 11 in the morning, but he said: “We’re going to see a band.” So we went to this empty nightclub to watch a band called Carmen rehearsing. They were the weirdest people – they danced flamenco on stage – and David treated them like pop stars. NBC, the US TV network, had asked him to do some midnight rock’n’roll show. They said he could do anything he liked – so he got Carmen to play, and had Marianne Faithfull on stage dressed up as a nun. It was the last time The Spiders from Mars played with him.

I was born and raised in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, in the heart of the folk scene, so I got to know a lot of musicians growing up. I started out as a road manager for the Byrds and always took a camera along with me, but not with any intention of being a photographer. Then when I started getting films developed, I realised I had an eye, so I gave it a go. I had an advantage because I knew all the artists and began getting published very quickly.

David is a photographer’s dream. In most cases when you’re shooting someone really wonderful on stage, they’ll come out, do the show and say goodbye. But David would appear in full drag for the opening songs and then go through four costume changes. Even when he was off-duty and tired, he still looked great. He was special, a true artist. And this is the moment he fully became that artist – while talking to a station porter.

CV

Born: New York, 25 July 1938

Studied: No formal training

High point: ”Woodstock festival. Talking my way in there was what really got my career started.”

Low point: “Falling out with the B52s manager after I took a picture of them without their beehive wigs on. I knew them really well – I was in love with one of them, but I became persona non grata after that. This guy managed the Ramones and Talking Heads and wouldn’t let me near them either. That really hurt.”

Set to a haunting rendition of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” the new ‘Game of Thrones’ trailer brings an incredible amount to take in, teasing new paths and challenges for near of the entire cast. At quick glances, we caught some freaking-looking men in gold masks causing chaos, Littlefinger encouraging Sansa to seek vengeance, Margaery’s wedding 2.0, Jorah getting down and dirty in some pit-fighting, Missandei and Grey Worm just plain getting down, and plenty of looks at the Sand Snakes of Dorne.

EDINBURGH stand-up Ben Verth was in an Italian restaurant in the capital's Grassmarket when he heard a chap at the next table declare that the desserts were too fancy for him, but his daughter encouraged him to try one.

PUBLIC relations company boss Alex Barr was at the Shore Capital Annual Burns Supper in Edinburgh the other night, and like all true professionals, he had a quick scan at the other name cards on his table. Says Alex: "Imagine how excited I was when I read the place cards either side of my seat. On my left was David Bowie and on my right was Alice Cooper. Before they arrived, I considered scribbling 'Elvis Presley' on my place card but you can take these things too far."

Alice turned out to be a fund manager and David is in agriculture technology, but charming company nevertheless, we are sure.

David Bowie has played with a lot of great guitarists in his day. But on Feb. 5, 1970, he introduced audiences to the one that arguably ended up outshining them all.

That's the date of Mick Ronson's first show with Bowie's band, which took place at the BBC Studios in London and found them delivering a 14-song set for a John Peel session. Though they performed a handful of cuts from Bowie's recently released 'Space Oddity' LP, which was completed before Ronson joined the lineup, his presence was already helping Bowie move in a new direction.